It is becoming more common for some business applications, such as Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications, to be implemented in mobile computing devices. Such mobile computing devices include personal digital assistants (PDA's), mobile phones, and other mobile computing devices. Users of such systems generally update a database on the mobile computing device through a synching operation with a central database of a server through either a wired or wireless network connection. The synching operation makes the data, such as account information, accessible by the user of the mobile computing device.
Unfortunately, limitations in the memory capacity of mobile computing devices make it undesirable, and often impossible, to perform full uploads of the business solutions data contained in the central database. In many instances, a user's business solutions data or the data the user has access to, can exceed a gigabyte or more in size. This volume of data typically greatly exceeds the local storage capacities of mobile computing devices, particularly mobile phones. In most cases, it is extremely difficult for the user to quickly determine how much storage space is available on the mobile computing device and the amount of storage space that is required to complete the synch operation. As a result, it is common for data overflow errors to occur due to an attempt to upload more CRM data than the mobile computing device has the capacity to store.
Such errors can be costly in terms of time and money. The initial encounter of an overflow error is time consuming since the overflow error is not detected until the synch operation has uploaded enough data to the mobile computing device to exceed its available storage capacity. The correction of such an error can be time consuming due to the need to first, make more storage space available on the mobile computing device, and second, retry the synch operation. Furthermore, there is no guarantee that the second synching attempt will be successful since the user is still unable to determine whether the mobile computing device has the storage capacity to handle the unknown amount of data it is to receive during the synch operation. Such multiple synch attempts, particularly between mobile phones and the central database, can be costly due to the typical per-minute charge for use of the network.